How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

[Rt66indierock]

4 hours ago, GUTB said:

Listened to the extremely high-end Dan D’Agostino room. Bi-amping a pair of YGs with a total of 4 Momentum monoblocks. The cool thing about this room was the use of the Stromtank, a massive panzer-sized German battery AC supply which they claim could run a system for 6 hours and completely isolate the system from the mains network. Probably has a high end anaolog AC waveform generator.

 

Sound through an Innous -> Aqua ladder DAC / AR Ref 10 is extremely transparent. Not the slightest hint of grain, digital or fatigue. Center image is completely separate from the speakers, so during vocals the speakers disappear completely. I couldn’t get much depth in what I heard though. It’s warm...perhaps too warm for my tastes. Bass is way too much...its cool being able to hear the synthetic bass cycling, but its too much and detracts from the presentation IMO.

 

Well the room sounded better with Danny Kaey the Technics guy and me picking the music.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, gmgraves said:

Oh, I agree. But I have auditioned (at great length) the MSB Diamond IV DAC with the Clock upgrade ($25,000+?) against the Schiit Yggdrasil, and everyone listening agreed that the Yggy was miles better sounding. Smoother, especially in the lower treble region and imaged much more realistically. Now the MSB had a more "etched" soundstage, that is true, but it didn't sound as natural as the Yggy. I haven't personally heard any of the newer Diamond or Platinum stuff.

 

That's exactly how I felt about it. When I said "impressive" I met in a "HiFi" unnatural way. The MSB 's I have heard have a signature which many will find appealing but for me the clear winner, without reservation, was the gryphon Kalliope that I compared it to directly. The Kalliope sounding more life like and neutral. I haven't had the opportunity to compare the Yggy.

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

That's a completely flawed concept George !

It put's 2 lots of interconnects in parallel at the output of the device, with the source device seeing double the capacitance at it's output.  

Many people ARE capable of hearing the differences between 2 cables in parallel, often  with half the load resistance, or one cable unterminated !

We're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one Alex. I simply know too much about wire and cable to buy that. They are only "in parallel" if both ends of both cable are terminated at the same point at the same time. In the DBT configuration that described, only one end is in parallel, the other, depending on which input is selected, is unterminated.

[sandyk]

10 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

We're just gonna have to agree to disagree on this one Alex. I simply know too much about wire and cable to buy that. They are only "in parallel" if both ends of both cable are terminated at the same point at the same time. In the DBT configuration that described, only one end is in parallel, the other, depending on which input is selected, is unterminated.

That's plain wrong ! There will be double the capacitance seen at the output of the source device if the cables have the same capacitance. Several of us went through the same crap with an E.E. from The Netherlands in another forum who attempted to show how to compare headphone cables.

 The cables ALSO need to be switched at the source device end !!!

 Perhaps you weren't sufficiently clear with what you were proposing, and I misunderstood you  ?

[semente]

9 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I can't argue with that sentiment in any way, mansr. You are quite correct. The GUTBs of this world coupled with the nuveau riche who just want to show off to their peers how much their trophy wives/trophy cars/trophy homes/trophy stereo systems cost. There are lots of them, and very few are audiophiles or even like music (beyond what they listened to in high-school and college). I've known a bunch of them. They are anything but audiophiles. They call-up an A/V specialist that I know, and tell him that they want the costliest audio system money can buy and my acquaintance provides it. Once these guys have the costly system installed, they rarely (if ever) play it except to show it off. I have nothing against the rich enjoying their money, were I among them, I'd do many similar things. I'd have a great sports car (a stable of great cars, actually) and I'd have a megabuck stereo system and great room to listen to it in. The difference is that I will have picked every piece of gear in that room for their performance, not because they cost the most. I find the rich dilettante disgusting and I do blame the audio community for pandering to that market instead of focusing on their core clientele, we who will buy audio equipment because it's our passion, not because it cost a small (or a large) fortune!

 

8 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

 

The nouveau riche will always be there and like you I also have a dealer friend attesting to them buying the most expensive kit but being clueless about sound quality.

 

 

I fall short of "disgust", it is a strong word.Not a lot excites me that way and frankly I don't care enough about the nouveau riche.

 

My real disagreement is regarding the audio community accommodating these people. It would be naive to think that a dealer would be anything other than delighted to have these customers. I don't think that means they don't equally look after their core clientele. I see it as a food chain of sorts. A long time ago I had a very good relationship with a dealer whereby I bought the second hand trade-ins of the rich folk, and at a great price. The dealer moved the second hand stock and made his profit selling new stuff. When I did buy new stuff he also looked after me with both price and service.

 

In my view, the press did it.

 

They're the ones driving the prices up, they're the ones pushing the cables, they're the ones providing a platform for the foo manufacturers.

 

They take advantage of the audiophiles' ignorance and, sometimes, of their gullibility.

 

This week here in the UK we've been discussing how to regulate personal credit providers, last week it was the gambling industry.

People just can't refrain themselves, we're buyers and the industries are doing their best to give us a hand in parting with our money. Magazines pay a major role in this, they are the marketing department's most advanced and effective tool.

MQA anyone?

[semente]

6 hours ago, GUTB said:

Disapointed in the Esoteric room today! This time they had Grandiosos on display and they were playing some tracks from an atendee's CD...played through a Grandioso disc player and into an Esoteric DAC...didn't identify if it was a Gradioso or not. It was an opera CD and BOY were the highs etched and sibilant! Not good! It sounded like good mid-fi or maybe high end consumer grade. I'll visit them again to see if they fixed the system...maybe the dome tweeters on the Cantons were breaking up?

 

 

Sounds like a job for @fas42 

[Summit]

8 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

 I listened to the MSB diamond and platinum, extensively. They are in my opinion very impressive sounding. The key for me was impressive in that they threw out a huge soundstage and were overly detailed and etched IMO. There was no denying the "wow" factor. The exact same DAC module was seen in a Rockna DAC at much less price. I didn't like that either. The MSB Select DAC is monumentally expensive. I have not heard it.

 

Sometimes then putting a very transparent and clear sounding DAC in an audio system and it makes the sound more etched, it’s not inevitably because the DAC has add it. The problem can originate from other gear and only be more noticeable with a more transparent and clear sounding DAC, that doesn’t mask artifacts made by other gear or the mains power.

 

MSB Select DAC is ridicule expensive, but are much better and smoother sounding than the MSB Diamond V IMO, so I guess I agree that some older MSB DAC can sound a bit synthetic and overly analytical after all ?.  

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

15 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Sometimes then putting a very transparent and clear sounding DAC in an audio system and it makes the sound more etched, it’s not inevitably because the DAC has add it. The problem can originate from other gear and only be more noticeable with a more transparent and clear sounding DAC, that doesn’t mask artifacts made by other gear or the mains power.

 

MSB Select DAC is ridicule expensive, but are much better and smoother sounding than the MSB Diamond V IMO, so I guess I agree that some older MSB DAC can sound a bit synthetic and overly analytical after all ?.  

 

Yes, the MSB Select is said to be something else, certainly the price is. The other MSB's character I noted in different systems so it was a consistent finding for me. I have a friend who liked it and another who bought the Rockna incorporating the MSB DAC modules.Yet another audiophile friend who agreed totally with my, and George's description.

[Rexp]

7 hours ago, GUTB said:

Disapointed in the Esoteric room today! This time they had Grandiosos on display and they were playing some tracks from an atendee's CD...played through a Grandioso disc player and into an Esoteric DAC...didn't identify if it was a Gradioso or not. It was an opera CD and BOY were the highs etched and sibilant! Not good! It sounded like good mid-fi or maybe high end consumer grade. I'll visit them again to see if they fixed the system...maybe the dome tweeters on the Cantons were breaking up?

 

If you a CD sounding anything other than crap, let me know.

[semente]

 

[Solstice380]

12 hours ago, gmgraves said:

audio community for pandering to that

 

I don’t think it’s limited to just the audio community.   Who fully utilizes a 15000 sq. ft. house?  You can still buy a mobile home.  A few years back I read that over half of the Porsche 911 Turbos purchased are crashed within a year.  (Obviously more money than skill with those buyers)  But, you can still buy a Volkswagen.

 

2 old sayings about the rich:  they never have a recession and they don’t pay interest.  What kind of customer would you prefer?  

[phosphorein]

14 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Yeah, but will it pass a perfect square wave at those frequencies? Sure, you can buy data probes from Tektronix that are "frequency compensated" to pass those kinds of high frequency square waves, but they are more than simple pieces of coax terminated with BNC or N RF connectors.

 

George,

 

I never measured them specifically for square wave performance, but I know they were passing signals with bandwidths greater than  a GHz. Obviously these were not garden variety coaxes but were designed for high frequency applications. And I had a couple of those Tek probes as well.

[mansr]

 

This image shows the built-in AFG of my Tektronix scope outputting a 10 MHz square wave through 0.5 m RG-58U to the channel 1 input, then via T coupling and 2 m RG-58U to the channel 2 input which is set to 50 Ω termination. The somewhat distorted top of the yellow (channel 1) trace is due a slight impedance mismatch somewhere causing reflections. Other than that, the only discernible effect of the 2-metre length is a 10 ns delay. I think this is good enough for audio.

[davide256]

11 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I think you misunderstand me. I too am sure that a dealer (or one worth his salt, anyway) equally looks after his core clientele. What I'm talking about, mostly, are manufacturers who see this market as an excuse to build higher and higher priced products. Mostly these products perform (sound) no better than much more reasonably priced offerings, but they have lots more snob appeal and people like GUTB fall for that with his "if it doesn't cost a fortune it's not high-end audio" attitude. The truth is that above a certain price point there is little to no correlation between price and sonic performance. Dan D'Agostino makes good stuff. There's no doubt of that. I'm listening to one of his Krell Integrated amps as I write this. but how much do you think His $40K integrated amp would cost if it had the same plain-jane casework as does my Krell KAV-300i? 

So clearly there are comments here not based on any  background in sales and marketing. When selling "boutique" items with runs of less than 100, you have to correctly target your market niche. With luxury items that cost more than $10K you are targeting a very different market than "working for a living"

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, sandyk said:

That's plain wrong ! There will be double the capacitance seen at the output of the source device if the cables have the same capacitance. Several of us went through the same crap with an E.E. from The Netherlands in another forum who attempted to show how to compare headphone cables.

 The cables ALSO need to be switched at the source device end !!!

 Perhaps you weren't sufficiently clear with what you were proposing, and I misunderstood you  ?

No you did not misunderstand me. And you're right! There will be double the capacitance seen at the output of the source device if the cables have the same capacitance. RG59 has about 60pf/meter of shunt capacitance. Put two runs in parallel and the total shunt capacitance is 120 pf/meter (capacitance, in parallel is Ct = C1 + C2 + Cx. In series it is Ct = 1/1/C1 + C2 + Cx).

 

That's about 23 dB loss/100M @ 100MHz or 0.00435 dB loss at 100 Khz over 1 meter. At 20 KHz that would be a loss of about 1/100th of a dB (give or take a few hundredths) for two 1 Meter parallel runs of RG59! It's minuscule, it's irrelevant. If one goes by the standard measurement in use in the electronics field today. Of

course, those who insist that LRC is not what gives cables their sound, then of course these calculations are meaningless.  

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

 

This image shows the built-in AFG of my Tektronix scope outputting a 10 MHz square wave through 0.5 m RG-58U to the channel 1 input, then via T coupling and 2 m RG-58U to the channel 2 input which is set to 50 Ω termination. The somewhat distorted top of the yellow (channel 1) trace is due a slight impedance mismatch somewhere causing reflections. Other than that, the only discernible effect of the 2-metre length is a 10 ns delay. I think this is good enough for audio.

Of course it is!. 

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, phosphorein said:

 

George,

 

I never measured them specifically for square wave performance, but I know they were passing signals with bandwidths greater than  a GHz. Obviously these were not garden variety coaxes but were designed for high frequency applications. And I had a couple of those Tek probes as well.

Stop taking this seriously. Nobody expects any coaxial cable to pass a 1 GHz or higher frequency square wave perfectly! I used an absurd frequency to show how ridiculous such a requirement for an audio cable would be. I was merely joking with Alex. It never occurred to me that anyone would take such a ridiculous criterion seriously! But many of you bit, just the same.

[gmgraves]

7 hours ago, semente said:

 

Sounds like a job for @fas42 

Yeah he needs to go in there and dress cables and solder connectors. Then that room will win "Best Sound of Show"!

[semente]

6 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Yeah he needs to go in there and dress cables and solder connectors. Then that room will win "Best Sound of Show"!

 

 

 

[Rt66indierock]

18 hours ago, GUTB said:

Disapointed in the Esoteric room today! This time they had Grandiosos on display and they were playing some tracks from an atendee's CD...played through a Grandioso disc player and into an Esoteric DAC...didn't identify if it was a Gradioso or not. It was an opera CD and BOY were the highs etched and sibilant! Not good! It sounded like good mid-fi or maybe high end consumer grade. I'll visit them again to see if they fixed the system...maybe the dome tweeters on the Cantons were breaking up?

 

 

The Esoteric room sounded just fine Saturday. They were telling everyone Friday the sound wasn’t right and come back today. The attendee’s cd you listened to was terrible. The were still talking about how bad it was today.

[sandyk]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

No you did not misunderstand me. And you're right! There will be double the capacitance seen at the output of the source device if the cables have the same capacitance. RG59 has about 60pf/meter of shunt capacitance. Put two runs in parallel and the total shunt capacitance is 120 pf/meter (capacitance, in parallel is Ct = C1 + C2 + Cx. In series it is Ct = 1/1/C1 + C2 + Cx).

 

That's about 23 dB loss/100M @ 100MHz or 0.00435 dB loss at 100 Khz over 1 meter. At 20 KHz that would be a loss of about 1/100th of a dB (give or take a few hundredths) for two 1 Meter parallel runs of RG59! It's minuscule, it's irrelevant. If one goes by the standard measurement in use in the electronics field today. Of

course, those who insist that LRC is not what gives cables their sound, then of course these calculations are meaningless.  

George

 It's not about losses due to the cables, it's the effect of the additional capacitance seen by the output device, and many opamps do not like to see a lot of direct capacitance at their output and may even become unstable, which is why most output I.C.s in typical consumer gear   (e.g.LM4562, LME49720 etc.) have something like a 100 ohm series resistor at their output.

 

Alex

[mansr]

12 minutes ago, sandyk said:

It's not about losses due to the cables, it's the effect of the additional capacitance seen by the output device, and many opamps do not like to see a lot of direct capacitance at their output and may even become unstable, which is why most output I.C.s in typical consumer gear   (e.g.LM4562, LME49720 etc.) have something like a 100 ohm series resistor at their output.

If the added capacitance is that troublesome, then a longer cable would be equally damaging. I don't recall seeing a maximum interconnect length specified in any equipment manuals.

[sandyk]

16 minutes ago, mansr said:

If the added capacitance is that troublesome, then a longer cable would be equally damaging. I don't recall seeing a maximum interconnect length specified in any equipment manuals.

 

 The series output resistors take care of that problem. Some of the data sheets showed the effect of the amount of direct capacitance at the output of an I.C. 

[mansr]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

The series output resistors take care of that problem.

Then what's the problem with the suggested setup?

[semente]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

Then what's the problem with the suggested setup?

 

More components in the signal path?